My Book "The Abyss" - Preface

From the Darkness

I take a deep breath ... what am I doing?  Who am I seeing staring back at me?  These are the unanswerable questions I thought I could never really answer, until a really listened to what I was saying to myself.

I am looking into what I think is a never ending abyss of despair and anger .. anger at myself and anger at the doctors who just didn’t seem to really listen to me when I was reaching out.  The anger stems from my laissez-faire attitude toward my eating habits and that maybe I would somehow see this body I see staring back at me would just go away, as if I was looking at a mirage or that maybe someone had secretly snuck into my house and switched all the mirrors with those “fun house” mirrors and I really was a “normal, healthy” person.

With great inner disgust with myself, I knew what I was doing was not working and no matter how many times I tried all these “fad” diets losing twenty pounds here and there was not really working out for me.   I couldn’t exercise properly as my weight was an issue and if I didn’t get the weight off, I could exercise properly.  Ahhh, the conundrum I was in!  “What to do? ... What to do?” would continually swarm around my head like a hamster running on its exercise wheel.

Well, I had to do something and I had to do it fast.  My husband, an avid runner who was now training for marathons, was very encouraging, but, I knew what I was doing was just not working and I needed to find an answer.  My family doctor I had when I was growing up and who looked after me during my two pregnancies suggested Dr. Bernstein’s Diet and Health Clinics.  I thought about it .. for about five minutes ... and thought, as the stubborn person I was (and have always been), I can get the weight off once my boys start to get more active and I should just see those pounds melt off.  Boy, was I about to get a rude awakening some five years later!  That never happened for me and I’m not really sure if that happens with anyone else ... but I can tell you this, I just did not have that positive experience of getting back to my pre-children weight and wish I had paid more attention to what I was doing to myself more and my body.

One of my biggest problems I had once I was pregnant was that when I asked my family doctor if my weight gain was a concern, as now I was about 60 pounds heavier and about 7 months pregnant, and he just didn’t seem to be as concerned as I was.  He simply stated that my blood tests never came back with a hint of underlying pregnancy related problems and my blood pressure was always normal, so armed with those two facts, he wasn’t concerned ... yet ... I was and I knew there was a problem, but, like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand I listened to the doctor and thought “well, he thinks there is no problem, so, maybe I will have no problem getting this weight off” ... nothing could have been further from the truth!

I wonder if they have weight interventions like they have drug and alcohol interventions ... This is where my journey begins.

Day Six

What an invigorating day!  I cycled to the clinic for my weigh-in ... a total of 4.2 km and found out I am now down a total of 8 lbs in one week!   Yahoo!


I also found out that on my exercise days, I am allowed one extra protein for the day.  I may have to exercise everyday so I can have that extra protein .. hee hee.   So, I also got my Vitamin B6 shot .. yowzers, that did sting .. felt like a hold hive of bees let loose in my butt area and a few of them stung me.  It still stings a bit after 2 hours, but, I know it is for the good of the program.  I can take that type of pain for sure!


Well, have to cut this one short as I have to go and bring my youngest son to the doctor's office as he has had reoccurring nose bleeds and we need to get this dealt with ASAP.


So, until tomorrow, my friends ... stay healthy!

Day Six

I am now on Day Six of the diet and I am another pound lighter!

I have also embarked on my first day of exercising.  I went out for a 19:15 cycle and over 3.1 km travelled.  Mind you, it was not at a very fast speed as my youngest son has decided that he wants to come with me for a cycle.  I will have to cycle casually with him one or two days a week and then at a more intense pace (for the time being, to some avid cyclists, that might be a casual ride for them) until I am getting lighter and lighter and then I can cycle faster.

So, tomorrow is weigh-in at the clinic and my next set of shots.  I also have to visit the lab services entity to get myself pricked with needles to ensure all the blood work is in fine shape.  But, my blood pressure is slowly decreasing (it's never been really bad, but, better is better) so that means I am returning to my once young self.

I will let you know how tomorrow goes ... until then ... stay healthy my friends!

Day Five

Day Five has found me SUPER excited!  It is now Monday and is weigh-in and shot day at the clinic.  

I saunter in and get myself weighed ... guess what?  I have lost FIVE POUNDS!  I am pumped and now I know I am on my way to a healthier me and a much healthier lifestyle.  The only thing I am really bummed about is that I can no longer drink any alcohol of any kind (no more martinis for me ... I only had them once in a while), so I will work around that issue when I need to, but, for now, I have read somewhere, either online or in my diet manual, that one can ask for a soda water and squeeze in lemon/lime and simply sip it slowly to give that illusion of having a wine.  So, I think I could manage that just fine.

I've now had some really excellent meals with this plan and I'm finding that those meals are actually quite filling!


Until tomorrow ... stay healthy my friends!

Day Four

Day Four was just like any other day I have been experiencing.  I found that waking up triggered more washroom visits and the desire to have a huge glass of water before I even begin the day.

I also found that throughout the day, I am actually becoming acutely aware that there are more food commercials being broadcast that I never really paid much attention to that fact.

I am also becoming aware that I will really need to think about an exercise program I like that can fit into my lifestyle and will produce the results I want.  I've decided that although I wanted to learn how to run a 5K race with hubby (by the way, he is training for a half marathon he is going to run next year .. and, yes, he is extremely fit .. which also puts another tick in my "anger" column a to why I let myself go, well, you know the story), I have always enjoyed cycling.  So, I am going to train to be in a road race for next year and see how that flourishes over time ... as I get lighter, the training will get simpler.


Until tomorrow ... stay healthy my friends!

Day Three

Day Three found me VERY invigorated with the thoughts of what the scale would find me.  I lost another pound!  WOW!!!!

And, yes, the gurus of weight loss were correct, I woke up with the feeling of not being so hungry and that I actually wanted to start on my vast quantities of liquid.  My headache was gone now (thank you, years of caffeine) and I felt that I could manage this new way of healthy living.  Unfortunately, it was a Saturday and that would not allow me to visit the clinic to do a weigh-in.

The day, nonetheless, was rather uneventful, filled with massive consumption of liquids, multiple visits to the washroom (maybe I should think about adding in things to the bathroom to make those visits even more enjoyable as I'm in there so often).


Until tomorrow ... stay healthy my friends!

My Journey Begins! .. A Historical Context

The first day of my newly formed vision of how to deal with my weight issue AND getting back to a healthy lifestyle did not simply begin on the day I decided to join the program I went on; it actually began back when I decided that enough was enough and I couldn't take the effects of what weight gain had done to my body.

It, my journey, must have really started around 4 years ago with the decision, albeit a weak and uninformed one, that I needed to jump start losing weight, but, went the route of spending money on a Wii game "Wii Fit" to see if that could get me going and begin the process.  Well, that worked for quite some time, but, alas, it, along with other things I tried, was doomed to fail.  Sadly, for the next 4 years, this was my circle of "guilt" and "anger" at how I managed to get this way in the first place.

To understand the real history of my "adult" battle with weight gain, we need to go back in time to where it all began.  The problem really began the day I met my future husband, over 18 years ago, where I would find myself beginning to get comfortable with our "couple-hood" and not really paying attention to what I was eating, how much I was eating or really what I was putting into my mouth.  I never had a real big issue with weight control before.  Close to one year of dating and enjoying being "wooed" and gaining around 30 pounds (being a tall person, I didn't really see the weight being put on), but, come the time for wedding day plans, I found out the awful truth.  I had went from a size 10 to a size 16!

Still I thought I would go on my honeymoon, become settled in our new home and I should be able to get my weight down.  Well, with some exercising and balancing my diet and eating more at home, I found I took off about 15 pounds of what I had gained.  This was acceptable to me at the time and after going on holidays a few times the pounds basically stayed off.

Now, comes the part that really angers me and makes me feel really guilty.  My husband and I decided, after 5 years of marriage, that we better start thinking about having a family as we didn't want to get too old to enjoy kids and grandkids and basically become senile old fools waiting on our next sponge "pleasure" baths from our grandkids.  We got our family started thirteen years ago and, this is where the guilt and anger is "born", I enjoyed being pregnant too much!  I ate whatever I wanted and whatever quantities I wanted (granted, I enjoyed having 4 litres of milk daily as well as the cravings for watermelon) and that would begin the "death spiral" into the abyss of weight doom.  I gained an estimated 70 pounds from my first child (son) and have never been able to take off that weight and my second child, born 18 months after my first born, would find only 25 pounds gained (I was taking off some of the first baby weight and then got pregnant, so, the weight went back on) but got that weight off very shortly after my second son's birth.

We had been living in Ontario, Canada at the time of our first years of marriage, along with the birth of my two sons, but, luck would have it that my husband transferred jobs from Burlington, Ontario to where we now live in Calgary, Alberta.  I think that move could well have been a catalyst for my final weight loss management decision; although it wasn't a very quick decision but rather it has come out a necessity to combat this problem I am having now as an adult and the need to want to be healthy and active for both my boys and eventually my grandkids.

Hence, why I am starting this blog.  I want to be able to document my personal journey with my final weight loss and subsequent maintenance of this new found weight loss as more of inspiration and a historical document for myself; but, if it inspires others with similar stories to help them, then I feel all the more empowered.

My journey now begins with my commitment to the "new and improved" me and that started with my first visit .. with hubby ... in joining the Dr. Berenstein Diet and Weight Management system and it has already been helping me realize not really what I was eating most of the time was bad, just that I was eating too much of it.  The saying "too much of a good thing can kill you" is exactly true and I am re-learning how to eat properly and also drinking lots of liquids .. something that I am not proud to say I was doing very little of.

Let the journey begin!